Plastic bags aren’t the problem, we are
Finding alternatives to carry your weekly shop might seem virtuous, but it’s not saving the planet.
The humble plastic bag is a remarkable triumph of technology. It costs a couple of cents to make, holds a thousand times its own weight, is waterproof, surprisingly durable, and 100 per cent recyclable. After carrying your groceries home, it might hold feijoas off the tree, your togs and towel, dirty rugby boots, and then end its life as a bin liner.
Having grown up with a ready supply of these miraculous freebies, I have mixed feelings about their imminent demise. Even if the Government doesn’t follow through on its proposed ban, the supermarkets will phase them out by the end of this year.
The big question is what will replace them. It’s counterintuitive, but plastic bags are far more energy efficient than, say, paper (it causes seven times more global warming than a plastic bag reused as a bin liner), or cotton (it would have to be used 327 times to break even with plastic) or those trendy reusable ones (a twice-weekly shopper has to use them on every trip for three years).
New World gave away 2 million reusable bags over summer. In the post-plastic era, these sort of cheap freebies will be the new normal, treated with the same casual disdain, and binned or lost long before the break-even point. Since cloth harbours nasty gremlins such as e coli, it’ll need to be washed with hot water and detergent, which blows out the environmental cost even more. In practice, most people will just toss them out when they get a bit manky.
The supermarket chains can’t believe their luck. The overseas
Why have plastic bags been singled out as the devil incarnate, despite being a miniscule part of the problem?
experience suggests they’re about to receive a massive boost in the sale of bin liners, which they essentially gave away for free all these years, and come out of the whole thing looking like heroes, despite potentially making global warming worse.
Of course, carbon emissions aren’t the only concern. Plastic takes ages to degrade compared to natural materials, and wreaks havoc on wildlife when it ends up in the sea. While this is terrible, ‘‘single use’’ plastic bags represent only 0.2 per cent of the waste that goes to landfill. Packaging material – like the trays and shrink-wrap and packets that we put in the bag – are 300 times worse.
Since plastic bags are fully recyclable these days, what we really have is an issue with littering. If you reuse and dispose of them correctly, there’s no worries.
So why have plastic bags been singled out as the devil incarnate, despite being a miniscule part of the problem? ‘‘Ban the bag’’ campaigners say it’s low-hanging fruit that gives us an easy win. The more cynical explanation is that it lets us feel the righteous pride of doing our bit, without having to make any real sacrifices.
The truth is that eating one less meat dish a week would make vastly more of a difference. So would biking or walking to the supermarket. So would stepping off the hamster wheel of consumerism. So would donating money to offset carbon emissions, or to cleaning up the ocean. These are the hard things, and no-one wants to do them.
Banning plastic bags is fiddling while Rome burns. It’s not important to make a difference, as long as you look like you’re making a difference; preferably with a limited edition hemp tote that has a cute picture of a seal on it and only cost $2.
Giving the remarkable plastic bag the respect it deserves is as simple as reducing, reusing, and being a tidy Kiwi. If you want to be truly virtuous, a meaningful lifestyle change is required. Got a burning money question? Email Budget Buster at richard.meadows@thedeepdish.org, or hit him up on Facebook, where you can also find links to previous Budget Busters.